Penellype's Allotment

[Penellype]

Busy as ever Pen. I'm quite jealous about the strawberries as mine are just starting to flower. You seem to have a never ending battle with horsetail.Keep up the good work.

Thanks Snadger. The strawberries have been in the growhouse which is in full sun so they have got a head start. Most of the plants are outside and they are just flowering.

The horsetail is horrendous. Each time I think I have dug it out from places like the tunnel, I plant something and it grows up in amongst and then of course I can't dig it. Its also growing back thickly under the hedge. I really need to pull it out from the road side but I'm nervous of people walking past and I also don't have anywhere to store the resulting rubbish.

[Penellype]

Don't give up Penellype it a great record of what you do and a very good read, thanks

Thanks Rary. I enjoy writing about it and posting photos, but nowadays everything is so slow it really takes most of the pleasure out of it. I will persevere and hopefully things will improve eventually.

[Penellype]

Saturday was unpleasantly windy and I spent most of it in the greenhouse at the stables and at home, apart from the usual trips to take water down and water everything. Harvested spinach and lettuce.

Sunday was better. The plot was covered in leaf debris from the trees but nothing appeared to be damaged. I planted out the peas then set about the day's main job, which was preparing the bed for the melons. The original idea had been to dig out all the old rotted hotbed and fill it with fresh muck, and I should have done this last month really, but I thought driving to and from the stables about 6 times in 1 day would not exactly comply with lockdown rules so I decided on a compromise. I would dig out the middle and fill it with muck to create a warm area under the actual plants, with the old compost around the edges. This plan became the only option anyway as when I got to the stables in the morning the muck trailer had been emptied and there was only the small amount of muck from Bertie's stable plus one other person's barrow load to go at.

Having brought down 3 bags of new compost from home and 4 tubs of muck from the stables and moved the resident strawberry pots, I then had to move the growhouse. This is not as hard as it sounds and was why I opted for this particular item - the panes of glass lift out easily leaving just the light aluminium frame to move, the main difficulty being manoeuvring a 6ft x 2ft frame amongst raised beds, bean poles and plants. I'd deliberately left the bed near the road empty so I had somewhere to put it down. I then dug out the middle, removing quite a bit of horsetail in the process. The muck I'd brought was just about enough to fill the bed to a reasonable level and I topped it off with the bought compost then replaced the growhouse. I then carefully weeded the strawberry pots (and ate a couple of ripe strawberries) before putting them back in the growhouse.

I'd been intending to trim some grass edges and clear up the leaf debris but I was tired and hot after doing the melon bed so I decided to water everything and go home. I noticed that one of the Lady C potatoes had a potato that was showing above the compost and in danger of going green, so I had a furtle and pulled out 4 reasonably sized new potatoes. I also pulled the first 3 carrots from the hotbed. I was a little disappointed with these - they looked a decent size on top, but were only an inch or 2 long underneath, possibly due to lack of water. Thay tasted fine though and as yet have no signs of carrot fly. I will eat the rest fairly quickly as they are not netted. I also harvested the inevitable spinach, which is showing signs of bolting now.

Yesterday was very warm and sunny I was busy all morning but went down after lunch intending to tidy up the leaf debris, trim the long grass edges and trim the hedges. I got the hedges and some of the grass done but it was far too hot in the sun and I couldn't face finishing the job. There are also lots of weeds sprouting everywhere after the little bit of rain we had last week but I decided they would have to wait. I watered everyting and took another bag of spinach home with me. Spinach is a vegetable that I can happily eat nearly every day, and it goes really well with one of my other favourites, tomatoes, which I have copious quantities of in the freezer.

[Penellype]

Tuesday
Took the 2 courgette plants to the allotment and planted them in the empty bed where the florence fennel was (now finished). Took down some long aluminium poles and extended the frame around the blueberry bushes to include the cherry tree. Cut some of the long grass edges, but soon got very hot in the sun and had to go home. Spent most of the rest of the day at home planting bedding plants. Harvested beetroot and lettuce for lunch and spinach for tea.

Wednesday
After being unable to finish all I wanted to do on Tuesday I was accumulating a backlog, so I decided to stay for a bit after my early morning trip with water and get a few things done before it got too hot. The most important job was finding out if I had a net that would cover the cherry tree. There are quite a few fruit that are swelling fast, and I remember from my childhood having a cherry tree in my parents' orchard and wanting to eat the cherries, but they never ripened because the birds always ate them first. The ground was always littered with cherry stones. I found the net I had used last year for the blueberries and as I expected it wasn't quite big enough, so I used another piece to cover the gap. Cherries and blueberries should now be safe from Mr. blackbird.

Next I needed to plant out the turnips, which were getting desperate. I have been dithering about where to put these as I didn't want to follow brassicas in the tunnel and they need a net to protect from cabbage root fly. I decided to put a row either end of the courgette bed and hope that they are ready to eat before the courgettes get too big. These were an afterthought really - I wasn't going to grow turnips this year, but I have been giving some produce to people at the stables and they said they like turnips so I sowed some old seeds I had to see if they would grow.

I was having a shuffle of plants at home, mainly because the tomato plants were getting far too big for the lights and needed to go in the growhouse. I therefore took the car down to the allotment with several bottles of water and trays of plants including 2 cucumbers, 4 tomatoes, 3 cauliflowers, a pot of leeks and a tray of african marigolds. The cauliflowers are an orange variety which I thought looked interesting. However, they are doing what cauliflowers do best - they grew nicely until they had 3 true leaves and now they are curling up and looking like dying. I put them at the shed end of the tunnel where it is more shady and all I can do is hope they will recover, but usually cauliflowers don't. Housing this lot meant rearranging things a bit and one of the pots of strawberries had to come out of the growhouse and go in the tunnel to make room for the tomatoes. I stayed for a bit and did some weeding in the tunnel and pulled a bit of horsetail, then harvested some spinach for tea and a couple of ripe strawberries.

Thursday
Busy all morning. Managed a reasonable stint at the allotment in the afternoon and got some more weeding done round the raised beds and some of the long grass edges along the boundary with next door's plot. This is full of horsetail and took me ages to separate out during which time I again got far too hot. The grass seems to be growing at a tremendous rate given the almost total lack of water. Harvested some spinach and carrots from the hotbed. The first lot of peas are nearly ready to pick - the ones at home were sown a week or so ahead and I have been eating those for a couple of days

Friday
Another very hot day. Went down after lunch and trimmed all the long grass down the west hedge, which was in the shade, pulling horsetail which was growing back yet again. I then had a good go at removing all the remaining annual weeds from the tunnel, leaving most of the horsetail for digging out another time. I find if I try to do both I don't make much progress with either and it was too hot for much digging, which turns the soil over and lets precious water evaporate. Harvested spinach and the rest of the carrots from the hotbed - these are disappointing - short and stumpy, and I'm not sure if it is due to lack of water or trying to grow them in fresh horse muck. Only one was badly forked though. I also harvested 10 ripe strawberries from the growhouse - the first to have made it back to the house this year.

I'd noticed that the new shoots on the cherry tree were covered in blackfly so when I got home I looked up when to prune it (it is a minarette tree). The leaflet that came with it says from May so when I went back to water I cut the new shoots back which has removed most of the problem for now.

[Penellype]

Saturday
Having rather foolishly sat outside in the sun (with a hat on but still too hot) in the morning, I didn't feel up to much in the afternoon. I got the watering done and trimmed a bit more of the grass edge along the roadside hedge, but that was about it.

Sunday
Took some french beans and a couple of melon plants down with me and planted one of the melons in the growhouse. The other is waiting for space in the hotbed. The strawberries have all now been moved to the shelves in the tunnel. Finished trimming the grass edge along the roadside hedge. This was a long job as it was tangled up with bluebell leaves and there was a fair amount of horsetail in amongst. I then set about digging horsetail out of the tunnel, of which there was quite a bit. I got most of it done before I got too hot and had to stop and go home. Harvested spinach, beetroot, the first Meteor peas, a couple of strawberries and the scrag ends of the PSB.

Monday
Took photos as it is 1st of the month. If I can find time to wait for pages on the forum to load I will try to post some. Went round the hedges trimming any long bits of hawthorn and blackthorn. I need to get the shears to the leylandii bits soon. Cut all the old leaves and flowering stems off the PSB but still need
to remove the stems. Trimmed the grass along the path next to the raised beds, which was full of horsetail and also in full sun, so I got very hot again, but at least that job is done for now - the grass was invading the space between the edging and the beds and was also producing flower heads. Ate a few strawberries and peas while I was there.

[Penellype]

[Penellype]

[Penellype]

Tesday
I wanted to get most things done before the weather broke, in particular cutting the grass, as I didn't know when it would next be dry enough. However when I went down in the morning it was wet with dew, so I spent some time removing the remaining old broccoli, brakali and calabrese plants and digging horsetail out of the tunnel. I didn't quite finish this before I got too hot. I also planted 2 cucumbers in the tunnel now that I've removed as much horsetail as possible from their positions. Harvested a beetroot and some peas for lunch.
Went back in the afternoon and cut the grass. Watered everything and decided not to risk planting the tomatoes outside, even with a cover over. They will have to stay in the growhouse until the cold spell finishes. Harvested spinach and a few strawberries for tea.

Wednesday
It rained quite hard over night so there was finally some water to collect. I went down first thing before it had really stopped and was rewarded with an extra half bucketful from puddles. It was much colder. I picked all the nearly ripe strawberries and took them home to dry off. It was cold and showery through the day so I only went back to shut the growhouse and collect a small amount of water in the evening.

Thursday
Very little water to collect in the morning. It was slightly less cold (or I was getting used to it) so I spent some time in the afternoon removing more of the horsetail from the tunnel and also from the path that runs between the tunnel and raised beds. Digging down with the fork showed that the rain has managed to penetrate reasonably well into the soil.
I noticed that the beet leaf miners are at work on the beetroot and a bit on the spinach. The young seedlings in the tunnel have been particularly hard hit, which is odd because the beets I grew in the tunnel last year avoided the leaf miner.
Harvested spinach, peas and a few more strawberries.
Showery later, so some water to collect in the evening.

Friday
Heavy rain over night and a decent amount of water to collect. I have now nearly refilled one of the 4 empty dustbins. Rather showery so I decided to spend most of the day at home. Harvested a beetroot and some peas.
Despite hail and thunder in the evening while I was at the stables there was very little water to collect from the day's showers, which have been very localised and clearly mostly missed the allotment!

[Snadger]

Hi penellype

I love to follow your gardening exploits. I would say a lot more but the site is coming up as 'Not secure' on my Chromebook so I have to go. Keep up the good work.

TTFN

[Penellype]

Thanks for the kind words Snadger. Yes, its coming up as not secure for me too.

Saturday and Sunday were pretty grotty weather-wise, cold, wet and windy. I did the bare minimum on Saturday, pulled a bit of horsetail out of the raised beds and harvested peas, strawberries and spinach on Sunday, and that was all.

Monday was a bit better, and I spent a while trimming bits off the hedge and cutting back nettles and pulling weeds and horsetail from the hedge bottom. I also harvested more peas and some of the Lady C new potatoes. However, I felt very limited by the threat of a cold and potentially frosty night. Several plants were desperate for planting but they had to spend another night under cover. I was going to get the fleece out and cover everything up, but it was fairly warm and when I checked the dew point in the evening it was steady at around 5 degrees. It is not possible for the temperature to drop below the dew point, although the dew point can go lower, but I decided to chance it and leave the fleece in its box. I was right - the temperature didn't drop below 7 all night.

Today was all about getting things planted out. I started with the runner beans, which were in danger of climbing up each other in the growhouse. I've had dreadful problems with runner beans this year. I grow Stardust (white flowers) at the allotment and a mixture of Stardust and Firestorm at my friend's and I sow them 2 to a pot in the propagator at home. 3 pots for the allotment and 3 of each for my friend. So I sowed 18 beans and 6 germinated, all of them Stardust. I'd finished the packet of Firestorm, so I sowed another 3 pots of Stardust, finishing those. Only 1 germinated. I now had 7 pots with 1 plant in each instead of 9 with 2 plants each. In desperation I went to the garden centre and bought a packet of Galaxy (red flowers) and put 8 seeds to chit on damp kitchen paper. After a few days all that had appeared was some green mould, although later one bean did produce a root. I sowed 4 more seeds in pots, one of which seems to be germinating, so after attempting to grow 36 seeds I have 7 plants and 2 that look as though they might possibly grow! Anyway, I planted the 3 Stardust at the allotment and put copper mesh round the plants and canes and sprinkled slug gone round them, as the last thing I need now is a slug or snail to chop them off at ground level.

Next up were the dwarf french beans - these have done marginally better than the runners in that I have 3 plants from 6 seeds (plus more at home). I planted these in the melon bed, in the gap between the back of the growhouse and the edge of the raised bed. They did well here last year. Then I dug some bits of horsetail that had appeared in the tunnel, and planted a cabbage and a calabrese, but the 3 orange cauliflowers that I was interested to try have pretty much given up the ghost as cauliflowers tend to. One day they look perfectly healthy, the next a leaf is going brown and wilty, and they slowly curl up and die. I have no idea what I am doing wrong - the cauliflower plants that I buy as plugs in the spring look just the same when they arrive, but they grow quite happily when treated exactly the same. finally I planted out the melon Emir in the hotbed where the carrots were. I put a section of small blowaway greenhouse with a wire shelf on over the plant and tied it loosely with string to train it to grow through the shelf, then used the frame of the cover to anchor a piece of plastic to make an open-ended tunnel for a bit of protection. I couldn't use the original cover because the spinach, which is bolting, is too tall.

By this time I was getting rather hot as the sun was out, so I ate a couple of strawberries and the first ripe raspberry and went home for lunch. I did a bit more planting out at home, then went back to the allotment to harvest some of the spinach for tea.

[Snadger]

Hi Penellype, I too have had problems with runner bean germination. I have barely enough planted out along my runner bean canes. I bought two packets online and only one arrived. I complained and had my full payment returned. I planted the one packet I had received but not one of them germinated.....bummer.
Luckily I have had more joy with my climbing French beans and have enough for my bean wigwam, plus some extras to beef up the runner bean rows.

[Penellype]

Hi Penellype, I too have had problems with runner bean germination. I have barely enough planted out along my runner bean canes. I bought two packets online and only one arrived. I complained and had my full payment returned. I planted the one packet I had received but not one of them germinated.....bummer.
Luckily I have had more joy with my climbing French beans and have enough for my bean wigwam, plus some extras to beef up the runner bean rows.

I tried climbing french beans when the first lot of runners did badly, but the seeds were old and none of them germinated.

[Penellype]

As the forum seems to be working today (I couldn't get onto it at all yesterday morning) I thought I'd better update this thread while can still sort of remember what I did.

Wednesday
Water to collect from over night rain and I was down early enough to scoop up an extra half a bucketful from the puddles. Whether I will look back on this as a waste of time as the rain continues to come down and all my storage becomes full anyway remains to be seen. As the forecast amounts of rain seem to be totally unreliable at the moment my policy is to collect water when it is there, for tomorrow may be dry. The water I scoop out of the puddles is muddy so that has a separate dustbin from the rest, and just in case it is on the alkaline side (unlikely) I don't use that bin for the blueberries.

Puzzlingly the strawberry tower in the tunnel had fallen over during the night. I wasn't aware that it was windy on Tuesday night and the base of the tower was weighed down by 2 bricks. It can't have been knocked over by a cat or large wildlife in the tunnel so it remains a complete mystery. I moved it closer to the pole in the centre of the tunnel and tied it on with a piece of string, which should prevent this happening again.

It was a cold and showery day, so apart from watering the melons and tomatoes that are under cover, collecting more water in the evening and harvesting a few ripe strawberries and a bag of spinach I didn't get any gardening done.

Thursday
A lot more water to collect from the bin lids and trays, but the puddles had dried by morning this time. Unfortunately the morning was dry and the afternoon threatening to be showery, and I was busy all morning, so all that got done at the allotment was harvesting peas, spinach and cauliflower plus a couple of ripe raspberries. I did manage to get the lawns cut at home as they had dried in the wind, which was a bonus.

This is the time of year when reality starts to sink in. My little minarette cherry tree had loads of blossom and quite a few fruit developed, but these are not turning into the nice, fat cherries that I imagined they would. Many of them have shrivelled up, and the ones that haven't are small and look likely to be mostly stone, while the tree on the next door plot (a year older than mine) has some nice big fruit that are turning red. I think I need to bite the bullet and plant the tree in the soil (which means deciding exactly where I want it), as it is clearly not happy in its 30 litre bucket despite being fed twice and watered every day.

Similarly, having harvested 2 perfect baby cauliflowers from buckets at home, I expected more of the same from the allotment. But when I cut the biggest cauliflower and removed the leaves it was clear that it had been nibbled extensively by slugs. When I got it home I soaked it upside down in a bowl of water (which I have found makes the slugs come out) and removed 5 largish slugs. This is despite my usual protections of a copper ring and slug gone on the soil at planting time. I think the problem here is that at no point during the spring was the weather suitable for the usual application of nematodes. They need a temperature of 5 degrees plus, so March is too early, and they can't be applied in strong sunshine which ruled out April and May. Even if I had managed to find a cloudy day, the soil has to be kept damp over the whole area for weeks, which is impossible at the allotment in a drought. I didn't even bother ordering any, so the slugs have come out in force as soon as it has rained. I have ordered nematodes now, but it feels very much like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.

On the plus side I have a huge crop of Meteor peas, the spinach has been superb (although it is bolting now) and the raspberry canes are bent over with the weight of fruit, which hopefully will not rot before it ripens in all this rain. More of these are starting to turn red now, and another 2 fruits were ripe enough to eat.

[Penellype]

Saturday
It rained hard on Friday night so there was plenty of water to collect, including scooping up 2 full buckets worth off the weed matting. I have now refilled almost all except one of the bins, although there is still space in the water butt and the blue barrel is only about 1/3 full. Unsurprisingly, everything was thoroughly wet, and although it had stopped raining all that got done was some harvesting of spinach, cauliflower, peas and strawberries.

Sunday
No more rain. Showers had been forecast but we didn't get one, and after a cloudy morning it developed into a sunny afternoon, although very warm and humid.

I needed to take down the last of the melon plants - this was the Magenta that I'd run out of seeds for, and had to wait 2 weeks for more to arrive. This wanted to go in the growhouse, so I had to plant out the 4 tomato plants, but first their bed needed preparing, so I set about this first thing in the morning, before I went to the stables. This was the bed nearest the road, which has been covered with weed matting since last autumn which has only been lifted to dig out horsetail from time to time. I was hopeful that there wouldn't be much horsetail, but there was a surprising amount, so I spent quite a while digging it out. By the time I had planted the tomatoes I was rather later than I had planned so I didn't have time to stake them.

After a morning at the stables (weeding and planting runner beans) I came back to finish the job and banged in some sturdy wooden stakes as these tomatoes are Oh Happy Day and Ferline, both of which are capable of producing huge trusses of large tomatoes which bamboo canes are nowhere near strong enough to support. I'd brought the melon plant down with me this time and put it in the growhouse, but as it had come straight out of the house I thought it best not to plant it yet. I decided to remove the plastic sheet I had used to cover the melon plant in the hotbed though - this one is Emir, which is supposed to grow outside.

Other than that, I picked more strawberries and spinach and half a butter tub of raspberries. These were the first to make it back to the house, but I noticed that the birds are helping themselves to some of the ripe fruit. This happened last year and I put up a net, but all that did was make it difficult for me to pick the fruit. The result was that over ripe and damaged fruit was left on the canes and the wasps moved in, which made me even more reluctant to try to pick the fruit. Given a choice between wasps and birds I will have birds any day, so I am going to try to avoid nets this year.

I went back in the evening to take down a tray of beetroot and water the melons.

Monday
Another warm, humid but dry day with a cloudy morning but sunny afternoon. I went down in the morning and removed weeds and horsetail from all the beds and paths outside the tunnel. I was hoping to cut the grass but it was very wet. I picked a large bag of peas (quite a few of which went in the freezer) and a small beetroot for lunch and ate a few raspberries.

I went back mid afternoon and decided the grass would have to be dry enough to cut as it was getting quite long in places - it was really still too wet for my little mower but I managed it. I then harvested another cauliflower (complete with resident slugs) and some Lady C potatoes. The potato foliage is going yellow and the plants have not grown anywhere near as tall as the ones I have at home, but the bucket I am pulling potatoes out of seems to have produced a decent crop. In contrast the plants in the buckets of Desiree (in the same raised bed) are about twice the size and are now in flower, and look dark green and healthy. I don't really mind what they look like as long as they produce something to eat, but the difference s striking. The Lady C were grown in the rotted horse manure that came out of the old hotbed, while the Desiree were grown in home made compost, which might have something to do with it.

[Snadger]

Strange that, my maincrop Elfe grown from supermarket potatoes are romping away, whereas my Charlotte earlies grown from seed potatoes have sickly looking weak foliage.